Utility bars of the general type with which this invention is concerned have been available for many years. Such tools run the gamut from long, straight crowbars used to lever large rocks in order to move the rocks to short J-shaped pry bars commonly used to pull nails, pry shingles from roofs, etc.
More recently, there has appeared on the market a utility bar made of flat bar stock. This bar, shown generally at 10 in FIG. 5, has a strap-like body 12 which is in the order of fifteen inches long. The lower end of body 12 is terminated by a relatively short, e.g., two inch, foot 14 which joins body 12 at a heel 16 that has reverse curvature. The forward edge of foot 14 has a bevel 14a at its upper surface and a notch 17 is provided in that edge for grasping nails. The upper end of body 12 has a relatively sharp edge formed by a bevel 12a at the rear surface of body 12 and a notch 18 is provided in that edge to enable bar 10 to grasp nails at that location. Usually, the upper end segment 12b of body 10 is curved rearwardly as shown in FIG. 5 and a wedge-shaped opening 19 is provided in the bar just below the curve. That opening may be used to hang the tool from the wall fastener or to grasp a nail head in order to lift out a nail.
Because the prior tool 10 has a short foot 14, when the tool is used to pry out a nail using the notch 17, the edge of the foot moves along an arc with a relatively short diameter with the result that the tool actually bends the nail. Therefore, if the nail is relatively long, a full downward stroke on the tool body 12 may not suffice to pull out the nail completely. The tool must then be disengaged from the nail and reengaged therewith at the notch 18 or opening 19 in order to finish extracting the nail. This two-step nail pulling procedure can be tedious and time consuming particularly if a particular project involves removing a large number of nails.
Another disadvantage of the prior tool 10 is that its edge bevels 12a and 14a are relatively short and face away from the tool's working fulcrums at 16 and 12b. This sometimes makes it somewhat difficult to engage the bar edge 12b and 14b under a nail head or between objects to be pried apart.
Also, the tool 10 is not particularly good for lifting or aligning heavy objects such as wood or wall board panels, doors, kitchen cabinets and the like. This is due not only to its diminutive foot which may dig into the object, but also to the overall shape of the tool and its insufficient rigidity.